Beyond Reach
by purple.bookworm.girl
Summary: What if the Pevensies left something a bit more personal than Narnia behind when they left? Peter's ten year old daughter is left to her own defenses as her whole family disappears. But something goes wrong as the Pevensies leave. AU, post Golden Age.
1. Chapter 1

**_A/N: My first Narnia story! I found all the books at my grandma's house at Christmas and got both movies, so I've re-found my obsession (you should see my flair board on facebook.) Anyways, I was thinking about this when I realized that the Pevensies leave Narnia really abruptly at the end of LWW._**

**_Disclaimer: I wish. C.S. Lewis had it good. At least I own Arielle and can make her as amazing as the Pevensies (maybe)._**

Ten-year-old Arielle stood quietly outside the throne room, waiting for her father and his brother and sisters to leave the throne room. As they stood up and walked stately towards her, she moved into the middle of the doorway. When they reached her, her father picked her up and swung her around quickly, causing her to gasp with laughter before he set her down. All five of them started towards the dining hall as Arielle started jabbering about what she was planning on doing for the rest of the day.

"I have a riding lesson just after lunch, then an embroidery lesson after that." One of the women next to her smiled as Arielle's nose wrinkled: she hated embroidery.

"Aunt Lucy, why do I have to do embroidery? I always mess it up!" Lucy shook her head, still smiling.

"Because Aunt Susan wants you to. And it's a good idea; you're learning more about Narnian history as you do it." The other woman shook her head, also with a smile playing about her lips.

"There's nothing wrong with learning to do something inside," she said, taking Arielle's hand in hers: they were both darkened by the sun. "Even when it's much nicer to be outside in the air and the sun." Arielle nodded, happy again.

"And after the embroidery I have an archery lesson! That's much more fun. Father, are you going to watch me?" The blond man behind her shook his head.

"Not this time. Uncle Ed wants to search for the White Stag today, so we're leaving after lunch." Arielle's eyes darkened for about half a second, but her face quickly lit up again.

"That's all right, I can show you when you get home." Her happy chatter kept up all through lunch until they parted at the stables, Arielle disappearing into the riding area near the stable as the adults galloped off down the trail towards the woods.

Her afternoon started off as normal, loving the wind in her hair as she rode her horse, snagging her needle in the fabric of the pillowcase she was making for her father, and the weight of her bow in her hands captivating her. After sending all her arrows straight to the target once again, her teacher told her to hold on a moment as he disappeared into the archery shed. She played with the end of the silver ribbon braided into her hair, wondering how Aunt Susan's hair always seemed to stay perfect as they rode or had target practice together. Her thoughts stopped dead in their tracks as she saw what her archery teacher was holding as he walked back out: Aunt Susan's bow and quiver of arrows. She stood up slowly and walked towards him, almost as if in a dream.

"Your Highness, Queen Susan told me to have you use these today. She wanted to see you when you used them for the first time, but she asked me to let you have them anyways when she realized she wouldn't be here." Arielle reached out slowly, almost reverently, for the old weapon that so symbolized Queen Susan the Gentle.

As her fingers touched it, a shock like lightning filled her body. She recoiled immediately, all spark of recognition gone from her eyes. She stood quietly, but not as she had that morning, happy, lively: now it was as if there was no life left in her: no mischief, no light. Even the shine on her small silver-and-gold hair wreath seemed diminished.

_**With the others:**_

They were laughing and talking as they rode through the woods. The girls and Peter pushed ahead as Edmund stopped quickly to give his horse a chance to rest. Susan laughed at him, teasing.

"Tired, Ed? What was it he said back at the castle?" she asked. Lucy smiled.

"You girls stay here; I'll catch the stag myself!" She laughed as Edmund glared at them with laughter still in his eyes. Suddenly Peter's voice rose above their cheerful banter.

"What's this?" he asked, dismounting his horse and pointed at a vine-covered metal pole that seemed very out-of-place in the Western Wood. The others all dismounted as well and walked over to it with him. Lucy tilted her head as realization dawned.

"Spare Oom…" she lifted her long skirt and started walking through a pathway that had been cut through the trees. The others followed her, slightly confused.

Suddenly, they weren't touching just spicy-smelling pine branches anymore. "These aren't branches," Peter observed as he stepped on Edmund's foot.

Susan agreed. "They're…coats," she said wonderingly as they all started to argue in the small, confined space. Suddenly, they were all falling through the air and hitting the floor together. Looking around, Susan took in their surroundings: a small, bare room that contained only a wardrobe, of which they seemed to have just fallen out. _We're in England_, she realized, memories rushing back.

The door opened quietly and an old, white-haired man stepped inside. "Where have you been?" he asked. They all glanced at each other quickly.

"You wouldn't believe us if we told you," Peter said. The man shook his head.

"Try me," he said, tossing a cricket ball to Peter. He turned back around and left the room, apparently expecting them to follow him. All four got up and dusted themselves off, but as they started to leave the room, Susan pulled them back. Peter looked at her questioningly and glanced at the open door.

"Arielle," she whispered. Peter's eyes immediately grew huge and he buried his face in his hands.

"What have we done?"

**_A/N2: Hope you liked it! Everything will be explained in a bit more detail later. And I did the seen at Lantern Waste as I could best remember it, I haven't read LWW in forever and I couldn't remember the movie._**

**_Ages as I think of them: They were in Narnia for fifteen years, and I thought Peter was 15, Susan 14, Ed 12, and Lucy 10 in LWW. So they're about 30, 29, 27, and 25 now. And if you didn't catch it, Arielle is Peter's daughter. I haven't really decided what to do about her mother...so as of right now she's never known her mother. It might change later though. And now I will stop rambling, because this note is about twice as long as I wanted it to be._**


	2. Chapter 2

**_A/N: I don't know what's wrong with me! I've never been this far behind in updating my good stories. I still love this one, and _Love So Rare_, but I haven't updated either in ages! Anyways, here's more Narnia yumminess to chew on. (That sounded really stupid.)_**

**_Disclaimer: I don't own anything except Arielle and the idea._**

_**Narnia:**_

Arielle sat listlessly on her bed after having been brought back in from the archery range. The castle's doctor had already been in to see her, but he could find nothing wrong.

"She seems just fine," he told the three tutors that had gathered around her room. "Except that she's lost her life and fire. Maybe her father will know something when he returns." They all nodded silently as they left the room, passing Mr. Tumnus as he walked in. He sat down on the bed next to Arielle, holding a book with blank pages. As soon as she realized what he was holding, she snatched it out of his hands and hurried over to her desk. Sliding into her chair, she grabbed a pencil and began to run it across the page quickly. Tumnus found he suddenly couldn't tear his eyes from the ten-year-old as she drew. It wasn't as if her spark had come back, but it was a mysterious tug that seemed like an island of correct-ness in the sea of wrong that was what had happened to Arielle.

After what seemed a very short time to him, she stood back up and walked over to him. Handing him the open book, she sat down again. His eyes were drawn to the page just as they'd been drawn to her a few minutes earlier. What was drawn there caused his breath to catch in his chest:

It was a perfect likeness of the drawing of Aslan on her father's shield, but it somehow seemed more lifelike and ready to jump off the page. Above the drawing, in the ancient Runic script that the Deep Magic was written in, that had always tormented Arielle in her lessons, was written, "He's not a tame Lion."

As Tumnus stared at the amazing drawing, from a girl who had never before been forced to sit at a table long enough to try something like this, Arielle's small hand snaked under his arm and flipped the corner of the page up. He flipped it the rest of the way and was greeted by another drawing, just as beautifully lifelike as the first: one he hadn't even realized she'd turned the page to draw.

It was a picture of the lamp post at Lantern Waste, but not as it was now, vine-covered and blooming with flowers: as it was when the four Kings and Queens had first come to Narnia, during the Hundred Years of Winter. There was snow piled up against its base, and snow lying on its flat top.

Tumnus stood up and closed the book: the comfortable feeling he'd had since Arielle started to draw disappeared as quickly as it had come. Taking her hand, he led her down to the kitchen.

"Princess Arielle is to eat here tonight instead of in the dining hall. I will be back soon, so I had better seen that she is treated as she should be," Tumnus told the kitchen staff. Dropping the sketchbook on the table, he walked back out into the castle that seemed gloomy in and of itself.

When he came back about ten minutes later, he immediately noticed an uneaten plate of food in front of Arielle. The next thing he noticed was the awed state of the staff: they were all staring at the ten-year-old as if she had just come from the presence of Aslan.

Tumnus fought his own desire to watch her draw as he tried to look over her shoulder and see what she was drawing. He could see familiar spires on the page, and recognition burst into his head as she thrust the book at him: the White Witch's ice palace.

"How can she draw these things she's never seen?" he asked out loud.

_**England:**_

Lucy was curled up on the couch, staring out the window at the dreary rain that pelted the house. She hadn't been able to get her niece off her mind since Susan had reminded them of her. A letter from her mother lay unopened in her lap, the envelope covered with small doodles she'd made of Narnia: Lantern Waste, the White Witch's castle, the beavers' dam…

She jumped as Peter laid a hand on her shoulder. "Lucy, I'm so sorry. I need to figure out how this happened and if we can get back. We left her all alone, and she was so constantly with us…I can't imagine what she's going through." Lucy shook her head as Susan and Edmund walked in.

"It feels so wrong to be here, and to be ten again. I'm Arielle's age! My niece, who hates embroidery and loves to be outside in everything, is all by herself and we're stuck here, her age, with no way to get back to her." Edmund shook his head.

"But there has to be a reason! I really don't think Aslan would strand us here and her there. He's not like that!"

Lucy's eyes filled with tears as she pushed the unopened letter towards Peter. "Look at what I'm drawing. Things that cross my mind, but I've never felt the urge to draw them. Now they just keep coming and won't leave until I get them down on paper. Do you think it has anything to do with Arielle?"

Peter's face was wistful as he studied the drawings. "I wish I knew. But they're places she's never seen. The Beavers have a new dam, she's never at Lantern Waste in the winter, the Witch was defeated before she was born…I just don't know."


End file.
